George Floyd died of asphyxiation: Medical examiner

Independent medical examiners who conducted an autopsy of George Floyd Sunday determined that asphyxiation from sustained pressure was the cause of death.

Aleccia Wilson, Director at Autopsy and Forensic Sciences at the University of Michigan, said she had examined Floyd’s body. “The evidence is consistent with mechanical asphyxia as the cause of death, and homicide as the manner of death,” she told mediapersons.

As seen in a video shot by a bystander, Floyd died on May 27 after a policeman knelt on the 46-year-old African American’s neck for almost nine minutes. Floyd became unresponsive after almost three minutes. Floyd was detained on a minor charge of passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

“Decedent experienced a cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by law enforcement officer(s),” the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said in a news release. Cause of death was listed as “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression.”

Under “other significant conditions” it said Floyd suffered from heart disease and hypertension, and listed fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use. Those factors were not listed under cause of death.

A Minneapolis police officer was charged last week with third-degree murder in Floyd’s death, and three other officers were fired. Bystander video showed the officer, Derek Chauvin, holding his knee on Floyd’s neck despite the man’s cries that he can’t breathe until he eventually stopped moving.

A separate autopsy commissioned for Floyd’s family also called his death a homicide. It concluded that that he died of asphyxiation due to neck and back compression, said the family’s attorney, Ben Crump, who called for the charge against Chauvin to be upgraded to first-degree murder and for three other officers to be charged. He didn’t say what the charges against the other officers should be.

That autopsy, by a forensic pathologist who also examined Eric Garner’s body, found the compression cut off blood to Floyd’s brain, and that the pressure of other officers’ knees on his back made it impossible for him to breathe, Crump said.

Both the medical examiner and the family’s experts differed from the description in last week’s criminal complaint against the officer of how Floyd died. The complaint, citing preliminary findings from the medical examiner, listed the effects of being restrained, along with underlying health issues and potential intoxicants in Floyd’s system. But it also said nothing was found “to support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.” Neither side has released its full autopsy report so far.

The family’s autopsy found no evidence of heart disease and concluded he had been healthy.

Floyd, a black man who was in handcuffs at the time, died after Chauvin, who is white, ignored bystander shouts to get off Floyd and Floyd’s cries that he couldn’t breathe. His death sparked days of protests in Minneapolis and around America.

The complaint provided no details about intoxicants. In the 911 call that drew police, the caller described the man suspected of paying with counterfeit money as “awfully drunk and he’s not in control of himself.”

Floyd’s family and attorneys, like the families of other black men killed by police, commissioned their own autopsy because they didn’t trust local authorities to produce an unbiased report.

The family’s autopsy was done by Michael Baden and Allecia Wilson. Baden is the former chief medical examiner of New York City, and was hired to do an autopsy of Garner, a black man who died in 2014 after New York police placed him in a chokehold and he pleaded that he could not breathe.

Baden also did an autopsy at the family’s request for Michael Brown, an 18-year-old shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri. He said Brown didn’t reveal signs of a struggle, casting doubt on a claim by police that a struggle between Brown and the officer led to the shooting.

Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist from the San Francisco Bay area who blogs about the subject and is not connected with the case, said the key difference between the medical examiner’s conclusions and those of Baden and Walker are the official finding of “significant” conditions for Floyd, including heart disease and drugs in his system.

Baden and Wilson acknowledged on a conference call with reporters that they didn’t have access to the tissue samples that the medical examiner kept that might have given more information on his health. Nor did they have their own toxicology results yet.

Melinek said it’s not unusual for different pathologists to reach different determinations, given that they may be looking at different information and that they’ve had different experiences and training.